ASSESS THE PREVALENCE OF EATING DISORDERS AMONG CHILDRENS IN SELECTED VILLAGE

Abstract: Eating disorders (ED), including anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa (BN), along with their variants are serious medical illness that often have a variety of medical complication, some of them being irreversible and life-threatening and have significant psychiatric comorbidity. Until recently these disorders have been often regarded as “Western culture-bound syndromes” arising in societies with the excessive emphasis on weight, shape and appearance. They have far common among females than males, mirroring cross-cultural differences in the importance of thinness for women. The thin-ideal of famine beauty is widely promoted by the media image have flooded western societies since the second half of the twenty centuries, during a period when icons of Americans beauty have become thinner and women’s magazines have published significantly more articles on methods for weight loss. Research suggests that the thin-ideal body is liked to body image disturbance in women and plays a central part in eating disorders. Quantitative research was conducted among 50 children. A non-purposive sampling technique was used to select the samples. Self-structured questionnaires were used to collect demographic data. The study results show that the diagnosis made and medical and psychiatric co-morbidity seen in the sample. Nine children received a diagnosis of anorexia nervosa. One child received the diagnosis of atypical anorexia nervosa. Eating disorder unspecified diagnosed in 2 children having severe depression with psychotic symptom’s as well as body image distortion and high avoidance of calorie foods. No patients in the sample received the diagnosis of bulimia nervosa and other psychological disturbances, p